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China has the moon firmly in sight. According to US experts, the “Chang’e 5” spacecraft, named after the Chinese moon goddess, could land on Earth’s satellite this Sunday. It should not only drop a rover to the surface, as in previous missions, but also return to earth with rock samples.
The mission began Tuesday morning, local time (Monday evening CET) from the Wenchang space station on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. The Space Agency of the People’s Republic has not yet announced an official landing date. “Chang’e 5” is expected to land in a volcanic area named after the German astronomer Karl Rümker (1788-1862), which is located in the “ocean of storms” – in the upper left of the earth side of the moon.
China has already successfully launched a probe to the moon twice. The biggest challenge is in the second part of the mission. If successful, it would be the first time in 44 years that rock samples would be returned to Earth. After the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, China would only be the third space nation to succeed in such a project.
“Landing on another celestial body is always complicated,” says Paolo Ferri, former head of mission operations for the European Space Agency ESA in the Darmstadt space control center. The real sticking point, Ferri believes, is returning. The lander loaded with stones should dock with the orbiter in orbit around the moon: “The appointment in orbit will be a new challenge and when you land on earth the calculations have to be very precise.” from Apollo 11 more than 50 years ago. However, the technology is much more advanced today.
Planetary geologist Ulrich Köhler of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is also eagerly awaiting the mission. While the Earth is extremely dynamic and changes both inside and on the surface, the much smaller moon, on which there is no plate tectonics or disruptive atmosphere, has barely been active for about three billion years, Köhler explains. geological Difference of the terrestrial satellite.
The moon formed when our proto-earth collided with a body the size of Mars about 4.4 billion years ago. The moon rock samples are therefore like a “window into the early days of the solar system”. According to Köhler, thanks to previous missions by Americans and Soviets, there are already about 382 kilograms of sample material from the moon in laboratories on earth, which would have allowed a great gain of knowledge. However, there are still gaps that could now be filled by the mission of the Chinese, who want to bring back about two kilograms of stones.
Try for the future
However, space expert Ferri von der Esa sees the start of the second Chinese lunar mission within two years of not just a geological mission, but a major technological test for manned flights to Earth’s satellite.
The Chinese had chosen a very complicated mission to bring samples from the moon to earth, says Ferri: “They could have made it much easier.” It is assumed that all the technology that will one day be equipped for one should be tested.It is necessary to land on the moon. The Chinese launched their first rover to Mars in the summer. “Much of what you do on the moon can also be used on Mars,” says Ferri.
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